Rupert, his eyes very shining, and his cheeks a bright scarlet, tumbled out of bed in a very long night-shirt and rolled into the arm-chair by the bed head. Caroline threw a blanket over him.
‘I must,’ she said, when he protested; ‘they always do when you’re ill and they’re making your bed.’
The children turned back the bedclothes and emptied three sacks of dripping rose leaves on to the bed.
‘Now,’ said Charles, shivering a little himself, ‘get in. I should think that’s enough to cool the hottest fever.’
Rupert rolled into bed. He was really very feverish—if he had not been, he would never have rolled into that couch of wet red rose leaves.
‘Oh, how ripping,’ he said; ‘it’s lovely; so cold, so cold. You are bricks to bring them. And how sweet they are. No! don’t cover me up. That’s what Mrs. Wilmington does. Let me get cool.’
‘They always cover you up,’ said Caroline severely. ‘Lie still, or the spell won’t work.’
‘Oh, is it a spell?’ said Rupert. ‘I thought it was rose leaves. Sacks of them, sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks. Each sack had a cat, each cat had a kit, you know. I say, if I talk nonsense, it’s because I want to. You’re not to think I don’t know it’s nonsense.’
‘You’re not to talk at all, even if you could talk sense,’ said Charlotte, tucking the bedclothes very tightly round his neck. ‘Lie still and say, “I am much better. I am quite well.” I have an aunt called Emmeline, and she never has a doctor, and she always says that.’